She Didn’t Want to Ubuntu

January 15th, 2009

This article is making fast rounds around blogs and social media networks, but it’s also stirring up a fair amount of discussion and criticism along the way.

According to the piece, an aspiring college student ordered a laptop from Dell and found out that it came with the Ubuntu operating system instead of the more widely known and accepted Windows. A salesperson supposedly convinced her to keep her laptop as is, only for her to find out that she couldn’t use her ISP’s Windows-only installation disc and couldn’t install Microsoft Word – which she says was mandatory for her courses. The result? She dropped out of college for two semesters because she couldn’t get online and couldn’t write her papers.

Except she could have if she had tried and done some research on her own. Not only did she not need the ISP installation disc to get online (a fact she would have discovered had she called the ISP company) she also didn’t need Microsoft Word in order to open and save Word docs. Ubuntu, as she even acknowledged in the video, came with OpenOffice.org installed – and one of the perks of OpenOffice.org is that you can use Word docs as you would with Microsoft Word.

So an aspiring college student lets a technical glitch get in the way of two semesters of school because she doesn’t stop to research the issue or contact companies and ask. No wonder everyone online is flabbergasted.

– Genevieve M. Blaber

Entry Filed under: College Craziness, General, School Tools